Faded Splotches
by WinchesterWorshiper
Summary: Olivia is the little sister to Aaron, Derrick, and Spencer. Follow the thought process of a young women who seems to have lost control of her life while holding onto the hope that her brothers will find her.


As I sat curled into the smallest shape I could make, all I could think about was how badly I had to pee.

I had a teacher in grade school who told us that when we had to pee while playing hide and seek, it was because all of our muscles and thoughts go into not wanting to be found, so having to urinate is the last thing our body wants to deal with. Strange, considering that's all my body seems to be dealing with right now. Of course, Mrs. Orwell was trying to prevent us from making fun of Drew Marril, who while playing hide and seek, peed in his pants. Who tries to make pissing your pants heroic? I currently believe that needing to pee is giving my mind the ability to think about something other than the present situation.

I had to pee so badly it hurt.

I find it strange that we are taught from a very early age how to hone in on the instincts and develop the skills to hide from someone who is trying to find you. We select someone to be "it" and then everyone rushes to find a place to hide in the hopes that we are the last to be found. For years, we tune into how to become masters of squeezing our bodies into tight places so that if we were thinking like civilized humans, we would never even think to place our bodies there. When we've played for so long, we reach this stage that even when not playing the game; we look at spots and think _that is my next hiding spot. _How fucking sadistic. How can we be a "functioning" society yet still get joy out of hiding and waiting to be hunted down like wild animals? Although, anyone who has ventured out into nature and taken a safety class knows that the best way to be found is to stay in one place. It's pretty fucking sadistic if you ask me.

I used to enjoy hide and seek – does that make me a sadist?

I used to hide in Aaron and Derek's room when I was like, five, because they were the oldest –fifteen and seventeen – and I was just a little five-year-old, trying to survive a house of boys. I like to think that they didn't know I was there, but looking back, I'm pretty sure they knew that I was under the inconspicuous bright pink blanket in the corner of their room reading a book. There were a few times that they walked into their room just talking, and I would just sit there listening and letting the words wash over me much like a safety blanket. Then, all of a sudden, the blanket would be ripped off of my body, and my hair would be frizzy from the sudden friction. They would be standing above me, laughing at my startled expression, and just let me hang out with them for a while.

I wonder what happened to the pink blanket.

"Hide and Seek"… what a terrible game – and yet here, at twenty seven years of age I am tucked into the darkest corner of my closet, covered in thrown and discarded clothes, trying my hardest to not breathe too loud or make too much movement. If I wasn't in this situation, (but still in this exact position) I think that I could be a work of art. Just picture it: a five foot nothing, dirty blond-hair brown eyed statue, huddled in the fetal position wearing nothing but a huge t-shirt and panties. Really, the only peculiar feature of the statue would be the face. Eyes open wide, nostrils flared, mouth wide open, and the facial expression one of extreme sadness, anger, and fear. I'm pretty sure I would pay money to see that anomaly of nature. Why do we try and open our mouth as wide as possible to quiet our breathing? I bet it is because we subconsciously believe that the wider our mouths are the more room our lungs will gain. _Be one with the clothes. _Be one with the foul smelling, moth-rotting, lost articles of clothing. Honestly, under normal circumstances, it shouldn't be this hard.

My adrenaline was running too high for this to be easy.

You would think that I would be used to this, hiding. I have three older brothers – Aaron, Derek, and Spencer – and being both the youngest by six years and a girl put me in a very interesting position. Half of my time was spent running away from the testosterone-filled boys running around the house, aimlessly trying to wrestle me to the ground or forcing me play the damsel in distress, and I spent the other half fiercely protected from all of the so-called dangers of the world. Dating especially proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be. By the time I was old enough to date they were all out of the house and working as officers. Try bringing your boyfriend to a house full of giant muscled men who always conveniently seemed to know when I was bringing someone home, and you'll see what I mean. But Danny made it through.

I wish he hadn't.

For the love of god, why did I still have this baby blue shirt covered in cartoon bees? It really was a god-awful shirt; it didn't even fit me anymore. Well, I guess the color was pretty, and Spencer did give it to me for a birthday many years ago, so I guess it held a small amount of sentimental value…but bees? I find it odd that a lot of people hate bees for the single fact that they sting. I happen to like them. They really fight to the death. Like, the objective for most life on earth is to survive, but for bees it's like, "I shall defend my families honor by sticking my ass in your arm and flying away without my guts to go die in a quiet corner as a hero!"…Okay, well now that I think about it, bees are the dumbest things in the world. Sure, we grow up learning to fear this flying thing that _might _sting you, but for some people, it's a founded reason – they could die. But really? We are scared of five minutes of miniscule pain that come from a bee's ass. There are worse things in the world to be afraid of.

Bees are assholes.

I was a freshman in college when I first met Danny, and we were both working in a little food store on campus. It took us a few weeks to work up the courage to even say hello to one another, but once we did, I never wanted to look back. I was young, and for once in my life I didn't have any of my brothers around to say who I could and could not date. Danny and I began our shotgun romance. Naturally, I fell hard and fast for the handsome philosophy major who wanted nothing more than to change the way I thought about life. I should probably tell you that halfway through our sophomore year, he decided that a degree in philosophy wouldn't help him change anything, so he switched into public policy and decided he was going to be a firefighter.

I was in love.

My hand is white-knuckling the phone in my hand. The screen is off but the line is still connected with someone. I was paying no attention to that though. Instead my eyes were focused on the jagged hole in a sweater that I had long ago forgot I had. It was royal blue and there was nothing significant about it except that my mother had bought it for me before I left for college. It was an article of clothing I wore when nobody was around; not because I hated it, but because it made me feel not so alone. Here I was, _alone,_ in this stupid closet, trying to breathe with my mouth open as wide as possible to reduce the noise. I had to constantly multitask, listening for muffled steps while trying to keep the terror from wrapping around my heart.

But at least the fucking blue sweater was here.

It was a year after we had first met and Danny wanted to meet my brothers. I mean I talked about them all of the time, so it was only natural that he meet the other three men in my life. I don't think Danny was prepared to be confronted by the three bulky police officers, all of whom were lounging around my parents' living room when we showed up for Spencer's birthday. He was grilled for a solid four hours before he finally passed "the test", and at the end of the day, Aaron and I were sitting on the porch watching the three fully grown men play zoo with Derek's five year old daughter. Aaron leaned over to me and said, "If he hurts you Olive branch, you know who to call".

Currently, I believe that Aaron is a psychic.

In 1997, the movie G.I. Jane was released. It's a story of a woman whose name I forget, but it features a poem by D H Lawrence. I'm not a poetry fan, nor am I one to really appreciate the fine works of words, but the poem _spoke _to me. _I've never seen a wild thing sorry for itself / a small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough / without ever feeling sorry for itself. _The day I sat in front of the screen and soaked in every word from that movie was the day that I changed how I viewed the world and the situations I found myself in. While I wanted to pity myself in this closet full of old, fake, happy memories, clothes that I would never wear again, and broken, torn shoes, it was this poem that reverberated around my terrified mind. The feeling of self-pity was anything but a natural reaction, it was a wrongly labeled way of saying that the situation I was in sucked.

I am a small bird.

Did you know that Danny actually went to my brothers for their blessing to marry me? I mean, my parents were still happily married, living in the same house that they were in when their oldest, Aaron, was born, so it wasn't like he didn't have parents to ask. I knew that Danny knew the tradition was to ask the father for the blessing, and after speaking to my brothers, he eventually went to my father, but he knew how important it was to me that Aaron, Derek, and Spencer each approved of my future husband, too. I would honestly give anything to have seen that conversation go down, but in the end, Danny and I were standing in the backyard of my parents' house on the fourth of July, surrounded by my family, when he went down on one knee, and at twenty-three, I became a fiancé.

Nobody said no to Danny.

You ever start thinking about what you would do if you were paralyzed? I do, but here's the thing: I start to think about it so hard that I begin to actually believe that a part of me is paralyzed…like my toes. Panic sets in and a strange sensation overcomes my body, as if my toes are on the verge of hurting, but because I "can't" feel them, all it creates is a panicky sensation that brings pressure onto my toes until I move them and the pressure is finally released. Right now, my feet are tucked into several pieces of material, and focusing on not moving so hard that the panic starts to set in and I have to move my toes, I do, and they crack. And I stop breathing.

Paralysis is a permanent solution to this temporary situation.

For the first three years of our marriage, life was bliss. Danny would go to work four days a week, then he would come home and spend his three days off with me. I would go to work nine to five at the private audit firm, and if when I came home, he was there, we would spend the night making dinner and catching up, and it would usually end up with a room full of clothes being flung about in frantic motion. If he wasn't home, I would clean up the house and settle down on the couch with a glass of wine and a nice, thick book. Then, at twenty-six, I was pregnant.

I should have aborted.

I don't move. I don't think. I am living completely in the moment of _dear god_. The closet door squeaks open, and from the position that I am in, I can only see a sliver of light in front of me. There is a moment of silence, and then I hear him move onto the bathroom. He calls my name and says that it would all be ok if I just came out and talked to him about it. I call complete bullshit on that lie that he spits out. Does he really think I am that stupid? The bruise blossoming on my cheek, and the fading splotches on the rest of my body claim a different history. He passes through the crack of artificial light and I squeeze my eyes shut, refusing to acknowledge what I just saw. I stay silent, unmoving, not daring to breathe until I hear him move down the stairs. I know that he will find me eventually and it's all I can do to hold back the sob that threatens to explode from my chest.

He had a knife. 

My parents were so happy that they would get a grandbaby from me, already planning what they were going to do with it and explaining how they would help. It wasn't that my brothers didn't want me to have a baby; they knew how important being a mommy was to me. I think it was just that they were struggling to live with the fact I was no longer a virgin. I legitimately thought that they were going to kill Danny if they found out, which was why I didn't tell them until I was three and a half months along and starting to show. To my surprise, they were ecstatic, and they took Danny outside to share a beer.

They should have beat his ass.

I found it strange that I no longer had to pee. Like, I didn't pee my pants – I know I didn't. Perhaps it was just that my mind had abandoned the hope that I would make it to the bathroom, but I know it was more that I had tuned out the idea. Although, now that I thought about it, I had to pee again. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought about the faces of each of my brothers. I thought about the sunny days of summer that we would spend running and playing tag. I thought about happiness and wondered where it had disappeared to. But because I was pondering the meaning of life instead of paying attention to my surroundings, I almost missed the crack of knees that snapped me out of the daze I had found myself in.

Oh God, was I about to die?

Neither I, nor the doctors could figure out why my body suddenly attacked the piece of me that had been growing for five months. I was sitting in the living room, when sucked deeply into the cheesy adventures of Nicolas Sparks, my hand rubbing my pregnant belly, something just shifted. There was no pain, no pressure, but it was like someone turned the light out in my tummy and I just _knew. _I called Aaron before I really understood what was happening and begged him to take me to the hospital. They were able to give me the weight, the length, the gender, even the godforsaken _blood type_ of my baby. They just couldn't give me the one thing I needed; a heartbeat. My parents wouldn't be able to take care of their grandson, my brothers wouldn't be able to cheer him on at his first ballet recital – I couldn't bring myself to think about what I wouldn't be able to do.

I don't think I could have hated myself more.

Did you know that when I was seven, I went to my brother Aaron and asked him why I was named after the bitter tasting olive? He told me that olives were thought to be the foods of the Gods. He said that the branches from the olive trees were so sought after that only the worthy would bear the crowns. Virgins, Brides, and Victors were the privileged few who were allowed to wear them. He told me that it symbolized peace and happiness, and because fate decided that I would always and forever be worthy, I deserved the name. When I was little, I soaked up every word that he spoke and he never did stop calling me his Olive Branch. Right now, I wonder if the Gods were looking down at me, laughing hysterically at the human who attempted to live up to the name of peace, but who could only show a life full of misguided attempts at happiness.

I demand a name change.

I gave birth to Demitree Aislin in a cold sterol delivery room, with my brothers sitting impatiently in the waiting room. I looked down at the cantaloupe sized person in my hand, and I honestly didn't know how to think or feel. Numbness, maybe? Despair? Danny had to work, and he never offered to come nor did I want him to witness the mess I would be. I think it made Derek upset that my husband refused to come, but I understood. The months following, I withdrew; I didn't call my brothers anymore, I didn't clean, and Danny never touched me for pleasure anymore. Perhaps if I had cleaned a little more in that time, or called my brothers once, I wouldn't be in this closet.

I wanted my baby back.

I don't know if it's a "man thing" that occurs when I grace their presence, but whenever I am around Danny or my brothers, I feel _little. _With my brothers, I am the _little _sister that they feel the need to protect. Aaron and Derek and Spencer, whenever I am around them I find comfort in the fact that I am protected, I know that it's not because they are police officers because I have felt like this (even if I didn't know it) since I was, well, little. But with Danny, it was different. He truly made me feel little. I was just the little blonde on his arm at parties, the little wife he had at home, waiting for him. The little woman with opinions that he didn't have to listen to. And now, I'm hiding in this little closet, trying to be as little as possible, making as little noise as I can.

I just want to be big.

It was never a conscious decision to dial the phone, but I did it. I couldn't tell you who was on the phone or if they had even picked up, but for me, the phone was clutched in my hand as tightly as it had been when I first grabbed it five minutes ago. I don't know where he went when he finished beating me down. The last I saw of him was his ass striding out of the house and slamming the front door, but now I felt him kneel down in front of me. My eyes were clenched so tightly that I started to see the strange kaleidoscope of color bursts; I refused to have his face be the last thing that I saw as I died. The clothes on my face were moved aside, and I flinched, expecting more pain.

It never came.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and blinked a few times. However, the person in front of me wasn't the power hungry man I had married, but in his place stood the men that I have known all of my life. My brothers had come to my rescue. The sob that I tried so hard to contain was finally released. The strong arms of my brother were wrapped around my trembling body, and I was finally rescued from the temporary confines of the closet. The warped game of hide and seek was over.

I could finally pee.


End file.
